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Hello again! Your back with Marty and Warehouse and Operations as a Career and I thank you for listening in with us today! I hope the audio’s alright for you, it’s been raining here for like a week and it’s really coming down right now but hey, the show must go on, right? We’ve received a couple of emails about how can I get noticed at our start-up meetings, what can I say? Along those same lines, all things being safety related, I was recently asked what is a Near Miss Program, I’ve heard it brought up on several episodes? So, I thought we could talk a little about Start-Up meetings or our pre-shift safety meetings & just such a program today!
So, I’ve always felt like our daily shift start-up meetings or our safety meetings are a great place to show our enthusiasm to management and shine with a little knowledge. To answer the question “How can I get noticed at our start-up meeting” I’ll give you a couple of my tried and true never fails! About a month ago, a gentleman asked me how he could introduce his boss to a pre-trip sheet for their equipment. They use electric rider jacks and reach lifts and I guess his maintenance department does a really good job keeping the equipment running and safe, but he’d been reading about the 29cfr1910.178 reg and asked if that’d be a good thing to bring up! I felt it’s a great topic and encouraged him to put something together, so he could present it to the boss. If you look on-line you’ll find 100’s of templates, I’d look them over and take the points that pertain to your facility and the equipment you’re using.
A few of the standard points, or maybe there just my go to points are:
Frayed or loose battery cables
Loose charging connectors
Drive wheels
Load wheels
Hydraulic oil leaks
Radiator leaks
Brakes and plugging!
If your facility is not utilizing pre and post trip reporting already you’ll want to be a little careful how you bring it up. I think you’ll want to mention it to your direct supervisor and not your maintenance department supervisor. It may be that no one knows they should have a program and if that’s the case you don’t want to dip them in the grease.
So how do you bring it up? When I noticed something about my jack that I’d normally just take back to maintenance and tell them about I’d bring it up during my start up. Maybe something like “I noticed my left load wheel has a flat spot on it this morning, I was about to take it to the back and tell so and so. I’ve been reading some about 29cfr1910.178, what do you think about maybe having some pre and post shift sheets for us to fill out, that way the 2nd shift could leave notes on their equipment too? You’re not throwing anyone under the bus and your showing management you’re interested in your job, the company and looking for efficiencies! Anytime you can slide a safety sentence in at a startup meeting is a great thing. A great thing for you, the company and I’ve always felt the boss too!
Ok, so let’s look at a Near Miss program!
Another way to get noticed by our management team is to ask questions during our start up or pre-shift meeting. As we’ve learned in previous episodes our bosses love to talk about things they know or are responsible for. They have a tough job, and usually don’t get the opportunity to boast about their knowledge. Hopefully they are encouraging us, patting the crew on the back when it’s deserved and congratulating us when we’ve done a good job but don’t get to brag on themselves very much. I think it’s great to give them that every chance we can. I was working with an order selector a while back and encouraged him to bring up productivity one night. I suggested towards the end of the meeting to ask something like hey chief, how are we doing on our productivity and errors, I’m trying to get my numbers up, are we the best crew in the corporation? It doesn’t matter if your company ranks number 1 or is towards the bottom of the list. Your boss is going to be proud of what he’s doing and being a member of his or her team we’re going to be presented in a non-negative manner. Now he may point out that we need to pick up the pace or we really need to watch our errors closer, but he’ll also share what he wants to do with us. The gentleman I was working with went on the share that towards the end of the shift that night his supervisor came up to him in the aisles and spent like 10 minutes talking to him, just shooting the breeze with him. The next night I had the gentleman ask if error numbers could be posted or could he know how many he’d made during the week. The short story is that today his facility not only post errors nightly but productivity as well and his companies HR department has spoken with him about being a lead for the shift!
If you notice all three of the things we’ve talked about today is really just communication. I know we’ve kind of harped on communication this year but if you wanted to drill down to 1 single thing that we can do to make more money I’d vote for us to communicate more. We’ve learned that listening is a large part of communicating, a point I sometimes struggle with, but in my experience if we will communicate more, communicate better, we will learn more which means we will earn more!
Well it’s time to wrap it up again, I really appreciate you checking in with us today and hope we’ve given you an idea or two to take to the floor with you this week! Shoot us an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and share one of your conversation starters with the group or give us a topic you’d like to learn more about. And please check out our Facebook or Twitter feeds using @whseandops and join in the conversation at the warehouse equipment operators’ group on facebook as well! Lets all work safe this week so we can get back together next week!